Fast-paced lines and gender roles in 'Brahman/i'

MICHAEL BROSILOW

MICHAEL BROSILOW

Nina MetzTribune reporter

"Brahman/i"

Staged as though it were a stand-up routine, with requisite brick-wall backdrop and mic stand center stage, this show from Minneapolis-based playwright Aditi Brennan Kapil and performed by the dynamic Chicago actress Fawzia Mirza presents a certain grammatical challenge. To paraphrase a line from the show: Who invented pronouns?

Gender, cultural identity and the pains of adolescence get a thorough filleting and grilling in this story of an American child of Indian immigrants who is born intersex, with both male and female genital characteristics.

When Brahman first takes the stage, in a leather jacket and hoodie, he identifies as male. (The show is a collaboration from Silk Road Rising and About Face.) "In my comedic stylings I'll be relying heavily on the whole just-being-Indian thing, as is my ethnocultural right" he says. "Frankly, you people are suckers for the funny accent. I could recite the damn phone book up in here."

But midway through, with a scarf tied at the waste and lipstick applied, Brahman/i identifies as female, a process set in motion (in part) after observing the allure of teenage girls: "I mean they're shining, and it's scary — they're scary and all-powerful."

By the show's end? Well, s/he is a bit of both genders: "I'm relying heavily on your lascivious curiosity about what's in my pants. My penis-slash-vagina." Of course, the story is about so much more.

Charismatic and flippant, though lacking a stand-up's knack for pacing, Mirza stalks the stage as if her blood ran with caffeine. Her delivery is fast and witty (she's especially sharp when analyzing slide images of the exuberant, oft-strange pornographic stone reliefs that decorate an ancient Hindu temple), but the performance is also invulnerable. What we see is an uncommonly unique character who comes across as a deeper thinker on the surface, but one moving too fast to stop for much reflection.

If a play like this is to fully work, it has to deliver on its conceit. As directed by Andrew Volkoff, it zooms along — through jokes, personal anecdotes and sardonic asides about Stonehenge — with unvarying velocity. But comedians are meticulous about timing and how they unfurl an act, and at 1 hour, 45 minutes, the minimal blocking options and uninterrupted tempo become cracks in the show's facade.

A traditional black-box theater space has been transformed into its opposite; a white box covered — covered — in black graffiti for this debut production from Deluge Theatre Collective.

Chicago's theater scene remains such a force precisely because new companies sprout up out of nowhere and set out to make their mark. Deluge has the right idea when it comes to style and temperament, but for its inaugural go the company is working with a play requiring dialect work that is beyond the ensemble's grasp.

The place is Britain. A band of teenage runaways convene in a squat that is little more than a refuge from the outside world. Their leader is a vicious romper-stomper named Lex (Allie Kunkler) with a hair-trigger temper and fierce stare.

British playwright Chris O'Connell has penned a fractured, frenzied story of gutter punks at their lowest. Narratively, it is a mess and lacks sufficient mood. As a character study, though, it offers the kind of gritty opportunities that will always be a lure for actors and audiences.

But the British accents — rough, confident, tangy — have to be just right. That's not the case here. No dialect coach is listed in director Tara Branham's erratic production, and it is the kind of mistake that undercuts the performances at every turn.

Through April 26, The Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale Ave.;$20 at delugetheatrecollective.org.